antillean

It's worse than that. As the next paragraph says:

"The online data were collected in two stages. In the first stage, the participants were recruited via several open internet discussion forums and several student mailing lists. In this stage, data about religious and paranormal beliefs, systemizing, mechanical abilities, and core ontological confusions were collected. The rest of the data were collected 1.5 years later. The recruitment message was sent by email to all individuals who had participated in the first stage and who had given their email address for participating in further studies (N= 1537). Of them, 237 could not be contacted because of outdated email address, and 887 did not take part in the present study."

So this is a self-selecting study: the initial group of 1537 (which was self-selected) was whittled down (largely through self-selection) to the final 258 on whom the results are based. Further to that, the authors gave no information on which of the "several open internet discussion forums and several student mailing lists" they recruited or how they did that recruitment. And they made no comparison between the demographic makeup of their sample and the general Finnish population. (Probably because it would've counted against the validity of the study since, y'know, Finland isn't 63% female or 44% students.)

Two responses to that.

Firstly because, well, that's just the way it is sometimes. Putting a gate in your wall can let in bad guys who can plunder your city, yes. But it can also let in good guys who can fortify it. You just need to design and use your gate well...and, I suppose, think of the government as good guys. (Soz, I've been indulging in some nostalgia with AOE 2: HD recently....)

And two: who says this has to involve decreasing IT security? I haven't seen enough evidence of cooperation between the gov't and the tech industry on this for me to believe that an agreement on this would require decreasing IT security.

Ah, yeah, you're right. My bad.

Ah

How does that work with Norway and Switzerland? Or is that different because they're members of the Schengen?

True.

I'm one of those Commonwealth nationals resident in the UK with the right to vote in this referendum. I had thought the case for the UK staying in the EU was obvious until I started thinking about it and, in the process, stumbled upon a frustratingly alluring argument for me -- and other non-EU, British-resident Commonwealth nationals (that is, other Commonwealth nationals legally living in the UK who are not also nationals of an EU country) -- to vote for the UK to leave.

The argument runs like this.

The UK's current level of migration is seen as a problem by the current UK government, by a significant proportion of British citizens, and probably even by a good few in the left-leaning parties. While the UK's in the EU, there's almost nothing that can be done to curb skilled or unskilled migration from the EU. Any government of a UK in the EU that wants to curb migration has to do so by clamping down on non-EU migrants. There's already no legal unskilled migrant route to the UK, so that means cutting back on skilled migration.

That clamping down is for me a personal pain, so much of a pain that it feels like every time I see Theresa May in the news it's because she wants to make it harder for me and other non-EU nationals to work in the UK. (I try really, really hard not to hate her.) If the UK left the EU, that'd allow the British government to apply the same rules across the board (to EU citizens as well as non-EU citizens) which'd probably lead to any UK government (from migration-hating UKIP to migration-loving Greens) having a more sensible approach to skilled migration. And not only is that in my own interest as a non-EU Commonwealth national, it's also in the UK's interest as far as having a sensible skilled migration policy goes.

This argument is, of course, too narrow on something as broad as the UK's members in the EU to be enough: it doesn't deal with the host of other things around British EU membership (wealth, security, environment, international influence etc). But my working visa issues are so frustrating that I find it a very, very tempting argument.

Eh, what? Hasn't the ROI had a say up to now? What's about to change? Is the EC about to invade the ROI?

Do you know what the estimate is for the proportion of monozygotic twins that are discordant for schizophrenia?

> There is also a quote of Gandhi I cannot find. So I'll paraphrase: If you are angry at someone, and he did not intend to hurt you, you should not be angry. If he did intend to hurt you, he is not as wise/it's in his nature, and you should not be angry.

What? Why shouldn't I be angry if a fool intentionally hurts me?